On April 7, 2014, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) made the following announcement:
“U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that it has received a sufficient number of H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap for fiscal year (FY) 2015. USCIS has also received more than the limit of 20,000 H-1B petitions filed under the U. S. advanced degree exemption.”
O.K., I know what you’re thinking. “Here he goes again.” Sorry, I can’t help myself. This one is a no brainer.
As a reminder, for those employers who wish to hire foreign nationals as H-1B nonimmigrant workers, unless the position is exempt from the annual cap, there is an annual cap of 65,000 nonimmigrant visas that are available in each government fiscal year (plus an additional 20,000 H-1B nonimmigrant visas for foreign nationals who have earned a master’s degree or higher from a U.S. institution of higher education).
So, in response to the cap being reached pretty much right away, the American Immigration Lawyer’s Association (“AILA”) issued a statement through their President, Doug Stump:
“There is a serious flaw in the laws governing H-1B visas. Instead of reacting to market needs, we discard the applications of tens of thousands of potentially job-creating immigrants every year. … I’m frustrated that we are still in this position. During the recession, we saw that the demand for H-1Bs slowed. The problem is that now that the recovery has been consistent for a few years, it’s become increasingly clear that keeping the same cap we’ve had on these visas for more than ten years is absolutely the last thing we should be doing.”
He’s frustrated? Imagine having to counsel a client that after paying you your legal fees, there’s a chance that all the work that you’ve done for them will go for naught because the government has set up a random lottery system to select which H-1B petitions will be selected and which ones will be rejected. That’s right, a random lottery system. (For you litigators out there, at least when you pick a jury, you have some sort of say in the process, but this is a complete crap shoot.)
Yes, that’s what happens when you receive more than twice the amount of petitions than there are visa numbers available. Indeed USCIS announced that it received approximately 172,500 H-1B petitions during the FY2015 filing period. As a result, it then performed a computer-generated random selection process, which it completed on April 10, 2014, to meet the 65,000 general-category cap and the 20,000 cap under the advanced degree exemption.
Mr. Stump went on in his statement:
“The H-1B process is a complicated one. The petitions are filed by U.S. employers seeking to hire a specific foreign national in a specialty occupation. This is a process that involves a lot of hoops to jump through as it is. If a company files an H-1B petition, the least we should do is consider the request and either approve or reject it on its merits. It isn’t rational to cap these visas arbitrarily and throw out thousands of applications without even a glance.”
I could not agree more. Clients start calling me in January to start preparing for H-1B filing season (which begins on April 1 each year). The simple fact is, there’s a lot of time and expense that goes into preparing an H-1B petition. This is all well-documented, and any Google search will confirm this. So, to go through all this effort and then have USCIS simply reject your client’s petition because the computer did not select it is absolutely ridiculous.
Yes, I know, it’s the law. But it’s a bad law. Again, AILA President Stump:
“Having the talent we need to do the skilled and specialized work that so many companies require in the globally competitive marketplace is vital to our economy and national interests. We need our legislators to take this issue seriously when they move forward on immigration reform because our legal immigration system is in desperate need of an overhaul in order to bring it into the 21st century.”
The same day USCIS made its announcement that the H-1B cap had been reached, the White House issued the following statement regarding the U.S. Department of Homeland Security:
“The Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) will soon publish several proposed rules that will make the United States more attractive to talented foreign entrepreneurs and other high-skill immigrants who will contribute substantially to the U.S. economy, create jobs, and enhance American innovative competitiveness. These proposed regulations include rules authorizing employment for spouses of certain high-skill workers on H-1B visas, as well as enhancing opportunities for outstanding professors and researchers. These measures build on continuing DHS efforts to streamline, eliminate inefficiency, and increase the transparency of the existing immigration system, such as by the launch of Entrepreneur Pathways, an online resource center that gives immigrant entrepreneurs an intuitive way to navigate opportunities to start and grow a business in the United States.”
The issue of “trailing spouses” is an important one, and locally here in the Capital Region, we have a great resource in Tech Valley Connect, a not-for-profit that, among other things, assists foreign national trailing spouses. But what about the fact that USCIS received more than twice the amount of petitions than there were H-1B numbers within just a few days of being able to file?
We desperately need to increase the number of cap-subject visas available for H-1B nonimmigrants. And that’s not going to happen without strong leadership in the White House, and the support of Congress. The time is still now.